Sport in South Africa

It’s the national religion. Transcending race, politics or language group, sport unites the country – and not just the male half of it.

When a South African team wins, a cacophony of hooting, cheering, banging of dustbin lids, trumpeting on cow horns and fireworks reverberates across the largest cities. The national adrenaline goes into overdrive. Maybe even the GDP goes up. And don’t risk looking too cheerful on the Monday morning after a dismal sporting weekend…

Sport, like no other South African institution, has shown it has the power to heal old wounds. When the Springboks won the Rugby World Cup on home turf in 1995, Nelson Mandela donned the No 6 shirt of the team’s captain – Francois Pienaar, a white Afrikaner – and the two embraced in a spontaneous gesture of racial reconciliation which melted hearts around the country.

A single moment, and 400 years of colonial strife and bitterness suddenly seemed so petty.

Racially segregated sport

During the apartheid era, racially segregated sport was a highly divisive issue, as exemplified by the case of Cape Town cricketer Basil D’Oliviera, a world-class talent who just happened to have the “wrong” skin colour.

Disqualified from local first-class cricket on the grounds of race, D’Oliviera went to live in England in 1960, becoming one of the stars of the English team.

When he was selected for a 1968 tour of South Africa, the apartheid government barred him – an act of folly that offended even the crustiest British conservatives, and turned South Africa into an international sporting pariah.

But it was a sporting moment that first helped to heal the country’s racial rift. In 1992, the country returned to the Olympics for the first time after being barred 32 years earlier. In the women’s 10 000 metre finals in Barcelona, two runners dominated the field, running shoulder to shoulder, lap after lap, way ahead of the field. One was South African Elana Meyer; the other was Ethiopian Derartu Tulu.

With just metres to go, Tulu found the strength to “kick” ahead of Meyer and become the first African woman to win a major Olympic title. But the big moment was to follow, when Tulu and Meyer embraced, then ran a lap of honour together, each draped in her country’s national flag, a white Afrikaner and a black African together, cheered on by the crowds.

SA’s ‘big three’ sports

The major sports in which South Africa excels are the aristocratic British games of rugby and cricket. For over a century, the country has regularly fielded teams of world- beating class, playing chiefly against arch-foes England, Australia and New Zealand.

Thirty years of apartheid isolation inflicted damage yet, despite many international disappointments, both teams have risen to the occasion since South Africa’s readmission to international sport in 1992, winning honours against the world’s toughest opposition.

The people’s game

But it is football – or soccer, as it is universally called here – that has won the hearts of South Africa’s black majority.

South Africa is by no means a giant in the world of soccer, but for many black South Africans, the country’s proudest sporting moment came when it won the African Nations Cup on home turf in 1996 – having failed to even qualify for the previous cup.

Soccer is intensely followed, and the quality of the local game keeps improving – as is demonstrated by the increasing number of South African players-in-exile among the glamorous European clubs.

The national team, nicknamed Bafana Bafana, which means “The Boys”, is extraordinarily erratic, beating giants, then succumbing to minnows.

Local teams, organised in a national league plus a plethora of knock-out cups, are followed with the same passion as in many other countries, by paint-daubed, costumed, whistling and cheering fans. Mercifully, the country has been spared the spectre of football hooliganism.

Golfing greats

The list of South African sporting achievements goes wider than the “big three” sports, however.

In a country of magnificent golf courses, it is not surprising that South Africa has bred some world-beating stars, from Bobby Locke in the post-World War Two period to Gary Player – who walked away with more international trophies than arch-rival Jack Nicklaus – to new stars Ernie Els, Retief Goosen, Trevor Immelman, Charl Schwartzel, Louis Oosthuizen and others.

South Africa has also bred world champions among our swimmers, athletes, surfers, boxers, tennis players and more.

World-class facilities

South Africa is the home of world-class sporting facilities capable of accommodating tens of thousands of spectators in comfort, such as the picturesque Newlands grounds, nestled at the foot of Cape Town’s mountains, and the energy-charged Wanderers Cricket Grounds in Johannesburg.

There are world-renowned rugby stadiums such as Pretoria’s Loftus Versfeld, home fortress of the feared Blue Bulls team; Johannesburg’s Ellis Park, where the 1995 World Cup final was staged, and Durban’s Kings Park, home of one of the best local sides, the Sharks.

The 2010 Fifa World Cup added a host of new outstanding stadiums to that list, including the FNB Stadium in Johannesburg (known as Soccer City during the event), the Moses Mabhida Stadium in Durban, and Cape Town Stadium.

Keep a watch on the newspapers while you’re here – if a big international game is being played, it could be worth your while to go and watch.

American-style sports are somewhat rarer. Baseball has a small amateur following, but is a long way from displacing cricket. Basketball has recently become more popular, particularly among black youths impressed by glimpses of US basketball stars on local television. It is now offered as a sport at many schools.

American-style football is unknown – although a few recycled South African rugby players have enjoyed modest success on the gridiron in the twilight of their careers.

If you prefer to play sports yourself rather than lounge in front of a television set, South Africa is a breathtaking destination; in fact the trickiest part will be making a choice.

The tiny village of Jeffrey’s Bay on the south-eastern coast, for example, has the misfortune of being one of the few scenically dull stretches along an otherwise spectacular coast. But Jeffrey’s Bay just happens to be a year-round host to the “perfect wave”, which is why it draws surfing champions from around the world.

The even more remote Sodwana Bay in Zululand is home to the world’s southern- most coral reef, and a paradise for snorkelling and scuba diving.

Ultra marathons

South Africa offers some of the world’s toughest endurance races, including the Comrades Marathon (raced between coastal Durban and mountainous Pietermaritzburg) and the Two Oceans Marathon, which wends its way through the mountains around Cape Town.

Both races draw tens of thousands of competitors from all over the world, every year. There are several back-breaking canoe marathons, of which the king is the Dusi in Kwa-Zulu Natal, with its tortuous rapids, rocky hills and a myriad other discomforts &ellip; snakes, for example.

Those parts of the great outdoors that are slightly flatter will allow you, for example, to ride bicycles, motorbikes or 4x4s through miles of mud and dirt.

There is fishing and sailing, hot air ballooning and gliding, horse riding, bungee jumping over large ravines, and big game hunting. In short: there’s every form of summer sport you can expect from a country with a surfeit of sunshine and wide open space.

For those here on business and unlikely to stray far from the cities, there are plenty of fine places to walk, run or cycle.

First prize is to do your exercising in the early evening among Cape Town’s magnificent forests and mountains. Durban offers the opportunity to run unimpeded along miles of golden beaches. And even in the concrete jungle itself, Johannesburg, you’ll find plenty of joggers and cyclists to keep you company in the parks.

South Africa is a land of sporting opportunities. Which opportunities are you going to seize?